Reason
Of Purchase I do a lot of flower
photography and most of the times I need
more control over DOF than what a normal
lens can give. The TS-E was an obvious
choice since it lets me control my plane
of focus and lets me maximize my DOF and
still keep the background out of focus.

First
Impressions The lens felt solid
in my hand and very well contructed. The
knobs are a bit small at first but I got
accustomed to it on the first day of use.

Field
Test

Here
is a picture taken with this lens
with maximum tilt @f 8, 1/60 sec,
ISO 200, Flash (550ex) with Mini
Soft Box.

With the
lens tilted forward you can see that I can
get most of the flower in sharp focus even
at f8. With a normal lens even at f/16 it
is not possible to get the entire flower
in complete focus.

The lens
is very sharp and the tilt and shift are
very easy to get used to.

I will
definitely be adding more to this section
as time goes by. I love this lens and would
be using it a lot in the field. It is very
small compared to my 180mm F3.5 macro lens
(which never made it to any long trip as
I like to travel light) and will definitely
be in my bag on long trips.

I have
been shooting with this lens for over a couple
of months now and find this lens on my camera
most of the time. It has a minimum focusing
distance which is enough to let you get close
to the flowers. I dont need any extender
or tubes most of the time.

One of
the main aspects I have noticed from this
lens is that the things out of focus has
a special blur effect which I can only describe
as "Dreamy". The out of focus things are
not just out of focus it has a nice smooth
dreamy feel to it.

1. To illustrate
what I am talking about, here is a shot I
had taken recently.

TS-E
90mm, 1/90 sec, f4.0, ISO 100. No
Tilt, Shifted 2 to the right for
composition.

2. Here
is another, shot on a lovely overcast New
England Day

TS-E
90mm + 2X Extender, 1/30 sec, f5.6,
ISO 200, No Tilt, Shifted for Composition.
The lens is very sharp even with
the 2X Extender.

3. Here
is another one shot just before a thunder
storm, shot at New England Wild flower preserve,
Mass.

Here is
a test of what the tilt effect can achieve.
All shots were taken at f/2.8, with the camera
mounted on a tripod. You can see from the
examples that as the lens is tilted more
towards the plane of required focus, more
of the subject comes into focus. The depth
of field remains the same for all the shots
only that we have more control with the tilt
shift lens to place the plane of focus as
desired to achive the results

Note: Each
time you tilt the lens, everything goes off
focus and you have to refocus. I set the
focus point on all shots to the exact same
position on the spoon.

1. Shot with
no tilt.

2. Shot with
2 degrees Tilt

3. Shot with
4 degress tilt

4. Shot with
6 degrees tilt

5. Shot with
8 degress Tilt (Max Tilt available
on the TS-E 90)

Examples of
Tilt Effect

Below are
examples of using the tilt effect in the
field. In the first example I tried to increase
the perceived depth of field by tilting the
lens forward to align the plane of focus
of the lens with the flowers. In the second
example I tilted the lens upwards to reduce
the depth of field.

F2.8,
1/640 sec

Here
is an example of using the tilt effect
in the field. I shot this one wide
open to get the nice smooth background
but still could tilt the plane of
focus to get all the flowers in focus.

F2.8,
1/500 sec

Here
is an example of using the tilt effect
to reduce the depth of field.. I
tilted the lens upwards to get only
a part of the flower in focus.

Shifting for
Panoramas

I have
been shooting with this lens for over an
year now and have been throughly enjoying
using this lens. On my visit to Yellowstone
and the Tetons last fall I tried out some
panoramas with this lens for compressed landscapes.
Below is an example of an image created using
three frames stitched together in PS. I composed
the picture by shifting the lens left and
right to make sure I was including all the
interesting elements. Once I set up the composition
all I had to do was to take three pictures
by just shifting the lens left, right and
with no shift. Once I bring the three pictures
into PS, I create a blank image with twice
the width of my image because that is the
size of my resulting picture. I use the center
frame as the top most layer and use the left
and right shifted frames as layers below
the middle frame. Some exposure compensation
is needed for the shifted images, I use levels
to increase the gamma value for the shifted
image until they seemlessly blend into the
center frame. Flatten the image and you are
done.

Image stitched
in PS from 3 frames #1 shifted left,
#2 no shift and #3 shifted right. The
resulting image is 6144 pixels wide
which is twice the frame width on a
D60.

Extra frames
in Horizontal Shifting

Since most
of us like to think in terms of a full frame
camera, what does shifting and stitching
mean in terms of a full frame camera. Let
us first talk about the horizontal format
of stitching to create a panorama. In the
figure on the left (below) I have overlayed
the frame captured by the D60 over the frame
as would be captured by a 1Ds. By shifting
the lens 11mm to the left(the max shift on
canon's TS-E lenses) we capture the extra
frame as shown in light blue in the figure
to the right (below). By shifting the lens
11mm to the right again we capture the extra
frame as shown in light blue in the figure
to the right (below). By putting the images
together in photoshop we end up with a frame
significantly wider than the one captured
by a full frame camera. So how much extra
frame do we get by stitching the 3 frames
together? On a D60 it is 22mm divided by
the sensor size which is 22.5mm, so we almost
get a full extra frame by stitching the 3
images together. On a 1Ds it would mean 22mm/36mm
which is almost two thirds of a frame.

The frames
capture by the D60 vs the 1Ds

The extra
frames captured is shown in light blue.

Extra frames
in Vertical Shifting

Let us
now compare the vertical frames captured
using this method to a horizontal image captured
by a full frame camera. Again in the figure
on the left (below) I have overlayed the
vertical frame captured by the D60 over the
horizontal frame as would be captured by
a 1Ds. By shifting the lens 11mm to the left(the
max shift on canon's TS-E lenses) we capture
the extra frame as shown in light blue in
the figure to the below. By shifting the
lens 11mm to the right again we capture the
extra frame as shown in light blue in the
figure to the right (below). By putting the
images together in photoshop we end up with
a frame almost equal to the one captured
by a full frame camera. So you can use a
24mm TS-E lens on a D60, capture 3 images
in Vertical format and put them together
in photoshop and end up with almost the same
field of view as using the 24mm TS-E on a
full frame 12MP camera. Pretty cool isn't
it.

The frames
capture by the D60 vs the 1Ds

The extra
frames captured is shown in light blue.

I have
put in writing all the things that have worked
for me.

Thanks for taking the
time to read the article, hope it is of some
help.